


Time & Patience

by billspilledquill



Category: Napoleonic Era RPF, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Battle of Austerlitz, Borodinskaya bitva | Battle of Borodino, F/M, Fever Dreams, M/M, More based on W&P characterisation than historical records, POV Second Person, Period-Typical Sexism, Treaty of Tilsit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 17:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18721450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: Alexander’s eyes are big, blue, and humid. They look at you directly, graceful hands at his sides. There is no secret in their missions: they are here to seduce.





	Time & Patience

**Author's Note:**

> _A lot_ of historical liberties are taken here. I’m also 99% sure this never happened. Like, it would be wild if it did, but, yeah. This is entirely Paul Mourousy’s fault. All the “womanly nature” comments in this fic is made purely to adhere to the Napoleon character. It made me cringe a little, but I passed through it.  
> I also want to formally apologise to Ethike_arete for this crazy idea of a fic.

 

>    _A Frenchman's self-assurance stems from his belief that he is mentally and physically irresistibly fascinating to both men and women. An Englishman's self-assurance is founded on his being a citizen of the best organised state in the world and on the fact that, as an Englishman, he always knows what to do, and that whatever he does as an Englishman is unquestionably correct. A Russian is self-assured simply because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe in the possibility of knowing anything fully._

 

At Erfurt, when you and Alexander are enemies in everything but in name, you have looked at him and asked what is summer. And Alexander, ever knowing his words, simply looked at him with his wild, blue eyes, and says with grace: _Eyes deceive not, Sire._  

 

_1807_

_mir_

 

Here’s what you think when you saw him: he is exactly what he is supposed to be like.

Alexander’s eyes are big, blue, and humid. They look at you directly, graceful hands at his sides. There is no secret in their missions. 

They are here to seduce.

A roll of his sleeve, a fluttering twitch of the arm. The young emperor a pampering bastard, you a penniless, proud child in a school full of bullies. This is how it should be. That is how it was supposed to be.

But you now call him brother. _Notre frère._ And he calls you friend. _Dorogoy drug_. You have heard of him- as anyone has heard of him- this young emperor full of charm and quiet smiles- humid eyes and round shoulders. His hair thinning on the side; so young, you think. The guilt from murdering your own father, perhaps.

 _I hate the English as much as you, Sire,_ Alexander says in French, with the r’s rolling slightly on the tongue. You remember your own accent, thick on the tongue and not at all elegant. He doesn’t have an accent, instead, a roll of a tongue to show respect to this not so French French emperor. 

You consider it— the emperor of all Russias, Grand Duke of Finland meeting with France’s underdog, king of the people, a child of destiny, blessed by gods, popes, and kings. Alexander’s grace comes from a swing of his arm, as if to make him believe that he will swing himself to a precipice like this, light. A grace.

Alexander’s eyes await your words. He hangs to every one of them like a young person in love. He acts like one consciously, you think, as his body slides down the chair like some boneless spirit, all light, all weightless weight, without any useless movement.

They shake hands, you give him your hand to shake, but Alexander pulls you into an embrace. Roars from soldiers. Cheering pierces your ears like a sharp, concrete slap. A historical moment, and yet only the warmth of Alexander’s body remains, leaving you cold after that.

His whole demeanour speaks sincerity. Consciously cruel, cold sincerity. The emperor is known for his masks. You wonder if he’d kneel down in front of you, with his eyes cast down and kissing the tips of his fingers. Alexander wouldn’t allow submission if he doesn’t gain anything from it, you think, as if you know him for an eternity.

You speak to your wife before you leave France, her stiff arms becoming soft by the touch. Her bellyregretfully not swollen with a womb. She said: _Don’t be afraid._ You replied, _I can’t be coward and be emperor at the same time._ She laughed, her voice shrill, but warm. She’s a snake that he will gladly be bitten by. She is the flower, innocent, lily-like, with venom under her sweet, sharp teeth.

You consider it again: the Tsar’s gloved hands and his straightened back, he smiles at you like a cat would smile when it’s time to be fed, and chats about trivial things that none of them are there for. 

_There are so many buttons in Prussian uniforms_ , you say. _How did they do it?_

He laughs. A charmer. He points at where his heart is, a golden button on his military coat. _They’re afraid of dying,_ he says, _they protect themselves most uselessly._

You are, after a day spent in his company, thoroughly seduced. You have charmed him as well, you know. In his actor’s eyes, you don’t believe that all brightness is false pretence. He couldn’t help the flattered smile when you said of him _to be especially handsome, like a hero with all the graces of an amiable Parisian_. You are a great seducer. Fascination with a Corsican, revolutionary emperor is not uncommon. You’re proud, and it is only fair to be so. You are, and so you will be, a piece of history that is scrutinised and critiqued, but never forgotten.

Alexander can be you. But he is too handsome and too mild in nature to go down in history as you. A frail, womanly grace lies in his tall stature and bosom. There will be no two great Alexanders, as one have been taught by Aristotle, the other by a Frenchman with too much ideas of liberty in his head. Liberty will be the death of you, you think. It will be his death too, as the people will tell him, sooner or later.

Alexander has the eyes of an opera singer and the built of an untrained soldier. Alexander is not suited to be king. But that’s what everyone had said of you. You have the form equalled to a rock left out in the rain, with fresh green moist decorating the surface, but a charm to fascinate like Alexander—the other one— like a hero of Antiquity, making its way to legend. 

Some music. The white, golden tent in which they are seated makes him blindly search for the red, hot colour of blood- on soldiers’ stripped sleeves, on their old wounds, on himself, on Alexander’s healthy red cheeks, blooming still. Alexander’s smile doesn’t fade, but it transforms at every glance you gave to the soldiers- to the decoration of the French flag erected just near them- near him.

You bite down your cheek, it floods, hot and warm. 

Be to so seduced, you think, to be convinced of seducing the other. Which is it? You both stand behind the raft, close to water.

At home, a million years ago, Jérôme would tell you how he enjoyed the water over at their small pond, with wild grass and small, little, crawling red things in the dirt. You want to dig you fingers in your blue, patterned coat; to feel the sensation of digging further, in your skin, in your coat. Alexander’s eyes; ponds of wild, wild blue, and his lashes feel like black feathers, black grass cutting at the edge of the world. 

You want to take him in your arms, throw him near the water— so near them— and hurl yourself too, pretending, if not a little too pointedly, that you will go to the precipice with him if that’s what it takes. Truth doesn’t come easily to sovereigns. Flattery, sometimes, gets you everywhere. You pretend to be infatuated, and so you will be. 

You see that he is still waiting for your answer. You say, your mouth bloody and afresh, to the still, unwavering, wild gaze: _I see that peace is made then._

Alexander smiles, almost relieved. You wonder if soldiers would die for that. You wonder if everyone should.

He inclines his head, a small acknowledgment. To be absolutely honest, in a lovely, truthful moment, you think they should.

You permit his hand on your shoulder. The consequences of peace: it atones you somehow, making the enemy an angel. The price of peace: Alexander’s soldiers thumping on the ground, rising like lions. The worth of peace: Tilsit, a blue, infinite sky. All is deceitful, all is lie, except that infinite sky; wild, wild sky. Blue, tall, infinite; forever.

Alexander put on Saint-Crosses as an award for the especially brave French soldiers. You do the same. The cheering doesn’t stop, and from the corner of your eye, you can distinguish a tall Russian soldier in the crowd, the soldier’s eyes fixating on the tsar, as if infatuated. This one, you think, wouldn’t even have been asked to fling himself to die for him.  

You keep your head high, your eyes searching up for what survives of the blue after such a terrible, beautiful war.

 

 

_1812, 7th September_

_voyna_

 

Here’s what you think when your soldiers are dying in the field of Borodino: this is exactly what it is supposed to be like.

The French are winning. They are also dying. You can’t win and die at the same time in any other event of life. Such a career is such life: dying, thinking that you could’ve died a little more. With glory; with pride. With dirt in their boots and blood in their hearts. 

You remember: you once saw a solider in Austerlitz that you thought dead. You said: _this is a beautiful death_. And then that man’s eyes fluttered open, open to the sky in front of him, as if in awe by all that is trivial, by the blue he saw, and none of the fascination to you, your words, and your status. That soldier was an honourable man.

Wars are what holds Moscow together now, with their population mobilising, the peasant soldiers and the fleeing nobles. Something about this is familiar, in his history, something about Alexander’s silence that is disquieting.

In this story, two emperors do not need the flick of the blade, do not need Paris’ method of execution. You simply need to step further into the battlefield, and all is done. You are what holds this war together. You are the solution to peace. You cannot die, in the greatest sense of the word.

Alexander is not here. But he can’t think him a coward. There’s an underlying respect in your letters that is not all diplomacy. There’s an underlying something, as always, in letters. Alexander’s wild blue and tame, round shoulders come to your mind; you suppress it with a bite of your tongue, as hot and warm just as the last time. 

And yet, in the horizon, it seems nearer, the blood and the hotness and the warmth. Jérôme warned him about how kings behave like generals, and how generals behave like soldiers, and how soldiers behave like kings in the battlefield. If only he bleeds the same blood, and when his blood will become as cheap as a lieutenant, he would gladly sacrifice himself for la patrie. 

The consequences of war: a missed bullet, a failed command; the price of war: an undelivered letter, fire to the past, unearned feelings; the beauty of war: silence. For god’s sake, you think, where is my kingdom? You have given up your white horse— where, if anything, is your Werther’s Lotte? Where is she, and if she is not here, the pistol given to him by her very hands? You’re confused by your greatness, but you’re certain of its success. You clasp your hands behind your back, tight, unflinching, standing over a crowd of powder-kegs and powder-smokes.

This is a vindication. This is where greatness lies.

 

 

_1812, 20th September_

_feu_

 

 _Dear sir,_ you hesitate, _my brother!_ You write. _There is no more beautiful, proud city of Moscow: Rostopchin set fire to it— I started a war against your Majesty without anger: one note from you before or after the last battles would stop my procession, and I really would like to sacrifice you the advantage of being the first to enter Moscow._

Alexander needs to reply. He needs to answer you. _Please_ , you almost think. You have never minded wars before, and so you never will. 

_You write again, you heart the pace of the quill: Ifyour Majesty keeps some more of those past feelings, you will favourably receive this letter. Nevertheless, you can only be grateful to me for being aware of what is happening in Moscow By this, my dear sir, my brother, I pray to God that he will guard your Majesty and shore under his holy and dignified protection._

Alexander does not reply. Moscow on fire, in devouring flames, consuming itself to oblivion. You think you smell something rotten, burnt to the point of no return.

 

_21st_

_rêve_

 

You dream of waltz. White little steps in courtrooms. In your mind’s eye, you can see Joséphine waltzing with Lannes. That’s when you know it is a dream. 

Jean alive, Joséphine waltzing. You don’t know which one of them is more dizzying.

Joséphine’s face stretches a smile.

“What about it?”

“About what?”

“You talk,” she says, “of winter.” 

You close your eyes. It doesn’t make her go away. “Winter never began,” you say. 

She answers, “Then summer won’t end.” 

She goes away in a flourish, silently protesting the way of your dream. That not even in dreams she would be pregnant with your (or someone else’s) child. That nor even in dreams she would stay your wife, young and bright and pretty as the first time you saw her at her estate. 

You don’t dance. Everyone around you does. You would walk up to Walewska and share with her a drink, exchanging words about the Poland situation. She, unlike anyone in your dreams, would argue with you. She also, unlike anyone in your court, laughs at you with a lovely ring to it. That is what you want her to be, so that’s what she’ll be. 

“Go look for him,” she says after your silence, with an ordering edge to her voice. “You weren’t looking at me anyway.” 

You obey. And you find him, easily because it’s your dream— Alexander, the one with the soft eyes and round shoulders, not the one in the history books. You doubt he will be too, soon. You know, with shame deep in your gut, that it is more than a dream. It is the most degrading fantasy, thinking about your enemy.  Enemy with thinning blonde hair and wild, wild blue. There is a wrong type of love. There must be a wrong type of love. 

Still, you frown. “This is ridiculous,” you say, when he reaches your waist. Alexander is quiet, as he always is, but his cheek colours. Even in your own dream, he seems to be able to pull an act. You remember the first time you saw him, his arms encircling you, his eyes not meeting yours.

“This is ridiculous,” you say, your finger touch his chin, lightly, lightly, the way you would’ve tended your wounded horse. You grab his chin down, staring. “Look at me.”

This Alexander does. You look at him, eyes clouds, sky, and rain. You can’t describe how he looks without dreaming. The only time he can really see him are in dreams. The stuff of dreams; how it may come?

This Alexander will do anything you ask him, you realise with a tremor. Your finger beneath his clean, smooth chin climbs to his lips. Pink, _thin_ lips. He stands tall (so tall, but you refuse to lift your head), and his resemblance with Walewka strikes you as an excuse for you to lean over. You smoother your thumb over his lower lip.

“Open,” you say before it is too late. He does.  

His tongue is waltz, you know the moment when you saw him in this absurd dream. When you take him to bed, though, you see other things that are waltz too. 

How can you be wrong, then, for loving the sublime? There must be something wrong in it, you are convinced, so you try to see some more. 

Alexander does not utter a word. This is what you want him to be, in dreams, in the stuff of it, so that’s what he’ll be.

 

_22th_

_réveil_

 

Marie-Louise sleeps soundly beside you. When you kiss her, it is not as soft, it is not as real. But she kisses back.

 

_1809_

_Brak_

 

Marriage: children. Here it is what you think, for the moment. There is a time for love, and there is a time for children. Neither is wrong.

(There must be a wrong type of love somewhere. You can’t bring yourself to think of that dream, but there must be a wrong kind of love, there, in your dreams, nights and nights again.)

Joséphine screams. She doesn’t accept anything with silence. There’s a charm to her refusal, to her brashness. There’s a charm to be loved in the right way.

You loved her, you really, really did. You love her still, that is the charm, and the secret to everything.

You want to marry a Russian princess. To strengthen your alliance with Russia, and with Alexander. It is now difficult to confuse the two of them together. You have met him, and the blue cannot be mistaken for anything else. Something swells inside you when you think of marrying a princess in Alexander’s lineage, her eyes wild and her arms stretched wide. It must be lovely, you think, it must be the right kind of love.

But Alexander is hesitant. Mon frère, he writes. And he finds excuses, which are easy to find. You try, nevertheless, to convince him, until you have lost all your patience and couldn’t bear to write letters without crossing them line by line, black on black. Irritation. Jealousy. Feeling of losing something that was never yours. Irritation.

You don’t know what angers you so much. You also don’t know what saddens you so much. Talleyrand, old cunning fox, would sometime pause at the most importune moment when talking of the Russia affair. He would say, with the usual language of politics, that you need to form alliance with Austria instead. _Sire, Austria is dire need of appraisal- a reminder of your affection._ Then, as always, your mouth would open with a half-hearted sneer, ready to make storms.

But your head is heavy with Joséphine’s cries and her tear-strained cheek, heavy with Alexander’s non-refusal refusal, heavy with the formality and the accuracy of this proposition that you have simply nodded, your head heavy, sinking on your shoulder, as if you’re melting from the sun.

Talleyrand smiles like a devil, but you call every one that esteem a devil of the new age. This one just seems more Dante than Virgil.

 

_1813_

_encore_

 

Joséphine visits Alexander in your dream. When they don’t waltz together, they would go to a corner, talking and exchanging quiet, hearted laughs. When you walk up to them, they can’t see you, which is of great interest to you, because you’re not used to being ignored.

You would often come to them when Joséphine is in the middle of her sentence: “—- and to think,” the open, sincere expression of joy in her face is so foreign to you that you almost misses the rest of the sentence, “— and to think that if you were a woman we would be rivals— fighting for his affection!”

Alexander never talks in your dream. But he blanches all the same, a boy caught in doing some dreadful deed. His eyes rolls to the side, not looking at her. One of them red and another white. The blue stills, and Alexander shakes his head, with a smile as bright as hers. Joséphine’s laughter resonates in the ballroom, but not shrill; a pretty, warm sound.

“You have to believe me- he said it himself!” She exclaims. In a fleeting, quick moment, Alexander looks at you (he sees you, gods, and you see him), but his gaze quickly settles back to Joséphine. “I would like that,” she says, “I wouldn’t mind if it’s you. You have charmed so many, surely accidents happen. I wouldn’t mind if it’s you, mon cher. I wouldn’t.” 

Alexander shakes his head gently. His round face full of life and love. You want him to be like this. That’s what he is. He covers his hand on hers, and inclines his head like a kind prince, a kind servant. Joséphine weeps with her face in her hands, her dark curls all falling around her. 

But Joséphine isn’t Joséphine when she lifts her head. You realise in horror that she now looks like you, young, fresh, new captain. You, in your awkwardly put uniform and your hair to your shoulder. Alexander kisses her hand— your hand. You snatch it away.

“This is ridiculous,” you say, feel like you said it before. Alexander, you think, only tumbles and fiddles with your attention— he can only accept, he does not offer anything that you’re too afraid to ask, even in dream. He will say I am fond of you as one is fond of ganache or a walk beside the river— no man never lived in your dreams, and no man ever loved. 

Your dream metamorphosis, and your aspiration Ovid’s words. If that’s Ars amatoria, then you have never known the right kind of love until now.

Alexander sighs, content when you cup his face. You say: “Sit here. Sit still.” You put your head on his shoulder, round, soft shoulder. A solider’s built, now, you realise that he had grown. 

“This is ridiculous,” you repeat, not wanting to say I am mad or I am mad for you, not wanting to utter the word affection, fondness, or love, you settle for your head on his shoulder, and you settled for a long, long while, thinking: yes, ridiculous. Alexander smells like water; damp, warm water in the summer.

When you ask him to kiss you, you rejoice in the feeling of winning. Feeling you can’t be older than thirty, feeling like an emperor, feeling glory showering you like your first baptism. When you open your eyes, it is Joséphine kissing you, her eyes boring into yours, tears staining your new captain uniform.

 

_1814_

_guerre_

 

There’s a place, in your mind, that you dreams more of. You dream of the summer country, from where no traveler bourn has to return, from where no traveler bourn is forced to return. A place where you rule with valour and splendour. Of France, of Europe. You dream it.

Here is a peaceful island, you believe. But as the sun streams down your face, and as you move your fingers through the sunlight and finding nothing— nothing but blinding light— you believe it an illusion of peace.

Here is no summer country; summer will end, and the cold will eat you, like a snake devouring its own tail. You plan to espace from here before winter arrives. You plan to make summer eternal, with your eyes as suns and your face the sky. You dream, for now, of the summer country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_1805_

_paix_

 

The soldier’s face, awed, transformed, moving with charm, with the dirt below his eye socket, and blood that surely blurs his vision. You hear him gasp, but not in pain.

You would sometimes hear cries at night in your quarter. Sounds of making love and the treating of bullet wounds. Austerlitz can’t make, can’t create, can’t believe this creature in front of you. This face devoid of pain and pleasure. This is a good death, you say. A beautiful one. You follow at where he is looking, and the sky, is suddenly in your eyes, blue, wild, infinite.

The man squirms when he puts his hands up, up high from the ground. You know that he is not reaching for the sky, no, the sun is simply too strong. A light smile stretches his face, as if there’s no pain, no deception other than that infinite sky, wild and blue.

That’s why this man should be dead. Austerlitz can’t allow a happy son. You let him smile, you let him gasp, and after, you walk away. Your boots stinks of sand, dirt if you are honest, blood if you absolutely need to. But you’re not a man without a plan, or ambition, or prone to do anything without great sacrifice. To be the child of god— to be worth something. Glory is that soldier or you. Here’s the two path to glory.

You plan peace, some year after that, with Russia. Temporary if necessary. But for now, with cannons at your feet and dirt—blood—beneath you, you can only close your eyes and dream of the summer country. Thinking, that must be it, summer without end.

Blue, wild, infinite— with suns as eyes, you think, and in your mouth; wine-dark sea. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Catch all the W&P cameos and you get a gold star!


End file.
